SK Hynix Beetle X31 review: This 10Gbps USB SSD scurries

Evocative designs, catchy names, and shining packaging all wait on to promote a product. Watch Seagate and WD’s note of advertising and marketing and marketing in total the the same storage units at each mainstream customers and gamers. Now not to inform Apple, which has raked in trillions off of its infamous consideration to product presentation and suave advertising and marketing and marketing terminology.

SK Hynix has followed suit to an extent with its mushy-performing Beetle X31 external SSD. The title and packaging are suggestive (The Mummy?), as is the win… considerably. I indubitably wish they’d long previous to town theme-wise with the force’s staunch look, however given the chart-topping performance, I’ll let that hump.

Additional reading: Leer our roundup of the finest external drives to search out out about competing products.

SK Hynix Beetle X31 win and value

With a radiant enough imagination (and the suggestion of the image on the packaging confirmed below), the X31 does trust considerably the look of a beetle. With out the appendages or division of the elytra and thorax, that is.

SK Hynix can trust done better calling it “Scarab” and the spend of colours extra evocative than the light gold it ships in. However that’s a matter for advertising and marketing and marketing mavens.

The Beetle X31 is in regards to the dimension of a scarab beetle at round 1.8-inches huge, 2.9-inches prolonged, and zero.57-inches thick. It weighs less than two ounces and the metal shell looks very rugged. There are non-skid pads on the bottom, and a Form-C port and process light on one end.

As of this writing, the X31 Beetle is available within the market on Amazon in 512GB/$71.06 and 1TB/$92.69 flavors. That’s above common for a 1TB, 10Gbps USB SSD and can simply be a sturdy promote when famed Samsung’s 1TB T7 Transportable is $10 more cost-effective.

The innards of the X31 must be NVMe from the 1GBps performance we noticed. SATA tops out at round 550MBps, ruling that out. The interior win absolute self assurance leverages one of SK Hynix’s trust SSDs. TLC NAND is likely employed, judging from its performance when secondary cache runs out. More on that below.

The SK Hynix Beetle X31 grew to turn out to be in a faster aggregate time than the 10Gbps opponents in our 48GB transfer assessments.

How does the SK Hynix Beetle X31 compose?

The Beetle X31 proved somewhat faster than the opponents total, though the margin would possibly per chance well per chance be largely unnoticeable to the naked watch. Mute, faster is faster, and SK Hynix can hang its hat on the Beetle’s success.

The sequential single-queue, single-thread read is the put the X31 made hay in CrystalDiskMark 8. Otherwise, it changed into as soon as appropriate a hair slower than the SanDisk Pro-G40.

The SK Hynix Beetle X31 grew to turn out to be in a faster aggregate time than the 10Gbps opponents in our 48GB transfer assessments.

Though the Beetle X31 grew to turn out to be in a extraordinarily correct 450GB write time, it went about attaining it in entertaining vogue. It began out at round 450MBps for the first 50GB or so, jumped to round 850MBps for almost all of the write, then when it ran out of secondary cache shut to the end (treating the TLC as SLC, writing one bit/stage in put of three bits/eight voltage phases), it dropped to round 250MBps.

It’s the first stint that’s uncommon, no longer the heart or end. This changed into as soon as replicated over the entire preliminary runs, moreover the extra runs we ran to make sure of what we were seeing.

Demonstrate that the time confirmed below came about when the force changed into as soon as squeaky unusual. It grew to turn out to be in considerably slower times (about 100 seconds longer) writing 450GB after our 48GB assessments were bustle. In other phrases, quiz considerably slower dapper file writes from the 1TB force at some level of day after day spend.

The Beetle X31 took the number-one plan amongst 10Gbps SSDs in synthetic benchmarks and our 48GB transfer assessments. It would possibly per chance well perchance per chance additionally trust taken the tip plan from the OWC Envoy Pro FX within the 450GB write if it were available within the market as a 2TB mannequin, though it would possibly probably per chance gathered trust been shut given the X31’s propensity for slack starts.

If you occur to aquire the SK Hynix Beetle X31?

The X31 is currently our prime 10Gbps performer, however being somewhat faster doesn’t offset its steeper observe value. Regardless, it’s a happy win with an humorous and entertaining moniker. Performance across the opponents being so shut, shop this class on observe.

How we take a look at

Exterior force assessments currently create the most of House windows 11, 64-bit running on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of memory whole). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are constructed-in to the back panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are faded. The 48GB transfer assessments create the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of whole memory. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB which additionally runs the OS.

Every take a look at is performed on a newly formatted and TRIM’d force so the implications are optimum. Demonstrate that in normal spend, as a force fills up, performance will decrease attributable to less NAND for secondary caching, moreover other factors.

Caveat: The performance numbers confirmed insist solely to the force we were shipped and to the capability tested. SSD performance can and can simply fluctuate by capability attributable to extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes across and the amount of NAND available within the market for secondary caching. Distributors additionally every so continuously swap parts. If you ever designate a dapper discrepancy between the performance you journey and that which we file, by all capacity, enable us to know.

Creator: Jon L. Jacobi, Freelance contributor